


a long, lonely time

by SafelyCapricious



Series: ain't no grave can hold my body down [27]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Crushes, Fangirls, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Sakura goes to suna, mission to suna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27239989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: Sakura knew better than nearly anyone else the appeal of a redeemed “bad-boy”, or hell, if she were being honest, someone non-redeemed.Non-redeemable even.Or even just the illusion of “bad-boy”-ness.There was something inherently appealing about the thought of healing or fixing someone -- emotionally in this case.
Series: ain't no grave can hold my body down [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950148
Comments: 7
Kudos: 111





	a long, lonely time

**Author's Note:**

> The word of the day is DECAY and title is from Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers because it was playing when I went to post. 
> 
> Uh, day 27 of fictober. 
> 
> This was theoretically going to go somewhere, but it mostly just rambles. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> I might continue this? I know the Sakura goes to Suna thing has been done a million times, but a million and one seems like a good number, yes? But for now, just this ridiculousness. Please enjoy.

Sakura knew better than nearly anyone else the appeal of a redeemed “bad-boy,” or hell, if she were being honest, someone non-redeemed.

Non-redeemable even.

Or even just the illusion of “bad-boy”-ness.

There was something inherently appealing about the thought of healing or fixing someone -- emotionally in this case.

(She could do the physical healing and fixing just fine these days, and perhaps that was why she no longer felt such a pull towards the need to find someone who needed emotional healing.)

Because she could either blame her attraction on that pull, or just admit that maybe she was a bad judge of character when she was younger. Not, to be fair, that there was much attempt at character judging when her crush on Sasuke had been. She’d been young, he’d been cute and the most talented in class. Later the appeal had grown as had the urge to help him get over all of his trauma.

She did sometimes wonder about him and wonder if someone had managed to help him get over his trauma.

She hadn’t given up on him, she could never let Naruto down like that, but she had become a bit more realistic over the years. It was seeming increasingly unlikely that Sasuke would come back -- and while she would still hope for that, she was fairly sure the crush was gone. Platonic team feelings -- the kind she should have had in the start -- and a need and desire to help him had taken the place.

But she currently wasn’t in any sort of condition or position to do that.

Rolling her eyes to the sky she tried to ask for patience. Because while she knew and understood the appeal of a redeemed “bad-boy,” she had stopped understanding the fanaticism of fangirls.

Especially in this case when she was unlikely to even see the object of their affection. “Girls, girls,” she held out her hands placatingly, hoping that none of her most junior nurses would try to jump her in some sort of jealous fit.

(Not, obviously, that she wouldn’t deal with that fine on her own, but she’d rather not have to.)

“I’m going to Suna, but I’m probably not even going to see the Kazekage -- you should send your letters and, erm, tokens, with the mail.”

The noise emanating from the now bouncing and frantic ladies in front of her reached an even higher pitch. She tried not to grimace obviously before using a slightly more commanding tone, “You all have patients to look after. Go back to work.” And she turned smartly on her heel and started stalking away. Once she had managed to get around the corner she leaned against the hallway wall and sighed.

Surely...she hadn’t been that bad, had she been?

************

“That bad? Oh hell no, we were definitely worse. They were just asking you to bring things from them for him right?” Ino used the tiny spoon that had come with her ice cream cone to point across the table at her pink haired companion, “You wanna know what either of us would have done if someone was going to visit Sasuke? Tried to ambush her so she couldn’t go and shown up in her place.” She gave her ice cream a lick and nodded, knowledgeably.

Sakura sighed, “Yeah, that’s probably true.” She paused to both enjoy her ice cream and consider for a moment, “I should probably put some more traps in place tonight. Just in case.”

The two enjoyed their respective ice cream cones in silence for a moment (pistachio-chocolate and mint chocolate chip with chocolate syrup respectively) before Ino got that look in her eye that had meant trouble since the first time Sakura had seen it.

“So, has he gotten hunky?”

Sakura’s brows wrinkled, “Has who?”

“Gaara, of course.” Ino huffed out.

Sakura wrinkled her nose, “I haven’t seen him for ages, how should I know?”

“You’ve seen him more recently than I have -- _I_ haven’t seen him since the chunin exams, back when we were twelve and he was a psycho killer and smelled like decaying body parts.”

Sakura tried to think of a diplomatic way to phrase her answer, “Well, it’s been some time since I last saw him too, three years. But when I saw him he looked, well, dead, but pretty much the same as when we were twelve. I dunno if he hadn’t hit a growth spurt yet or maybe all that not sleeping is keeping him from growing -- the body does need to rest to --”

“Please don’t start on one of your mednin lectures, I get it. But if you catch a look at him this time, and he’s as much a hunk as having so many fangirls might suggest, let me know -- I could totally go for a Kage.” Ino winked.

Smirking slightly, Sakura delivered a last blow before getting up to head home to pack, “I’ll let Naruto know you said so.”And with that she took off, ignoring Ino’s shocked cry -- and cheerfully leaving Ino with the bill, which she would doubtless remember in a few more moments.

She’d picked up a lot of bad habits from her teachers, and poor Ino had to bare the brunt of most of them.

************

She was starting to wish that she had let one of the fangirls ambush her and take her out of commission so they could go on the mission.

She knew, both intellectually and from experience, that Suna was hot.

But time and distance made the memory of the heat less bad.

It was bad.

She felt like she was melting.

It didn’t help that she’d been traveling through the heat -- she’d _wanted_ to travel at night, but her escorts were worried about the snakes that came out at night. They were apparently extremely poisonous. And even her argument that she was _great_ with poisons hadn’t made them reconsider.

She couldn’t wait until they were actually in the city -- which they were now close enough that she could see -- and she could find somewhere to just sit and not move. Not moving sounded like the perfect idea in this heat.

Though as soon as she actually stepped foot into the city she wanted to reconsider. Even though everything was made from stone and mud, the same stuff that was out in the desert, it was several degrees hotter.

She would kill for a fan. Or ice.

She briefly entertained the fantasy of taking one of the random people walking the street -- there weren’t many of them, clearly they had the right idea -- and shaking them until they pointed her towards cool comforts. But since her mission was really diplomatic in nature, if medical in practice, that probably wouldn’t be the best start. So she resisted. Barely and with bad a rather grudging attitude.

The captain of the team she’d been sent with told everyone where to head -- she was sent straight to the hospital. The captain was going to go report to the Kazekage and exchange scrolls, before going on his way with the group of sandnins who were part of the temporary trade.

(Tsunade kept calling it the “Learning from each other and shit like that” mission, but Sakura had decided it was probably best not to repeat that name around anyone else.)

The hospital was blessedly air conditioned, and Sakura paused upon gaining the entrance and just stood there for a moment, face tilted up towards the source of cool air. She’d never been inconspicuous, and standing in the middle of the entrance wasn’t helping her cause, so it didn’t take very long for someone to come up and inquire about who she was and what she was doing there.

She sighed, grimaced at the feel of tacky sweat that she could feel drying on her skin pretty much everywhere, and handed over the slightly worse for the wear scroll marked for the head of the hospital. The girl’s eyes widened when she saw who it was for and she asked Sakura to wait in a chair before rushing off to deliver the scroll.

Sakura, on discovering the plastic of the chairs to be refreshingly cool, sank down into one gratefully and tried to relax. Naturally the chair was as uncomfortable as all waiting room chairs were -- she made a mental note to try to talk to someone about changing that, there was really no reason for them to be quite so uncomfortable that she could see.

She’d been slowly destroying the ones in Konoha with careful application of temper. She was pretty sure Tsunade knew what she was about, but she hadn’t stopped her and so that was basically permission to keep doing it.

She was waiting until a few more were destroyed before cashing in on the bet Yamato had lost to her, and making him grow her some comfortable chairs.

Probably Sand didn’t have something like that.

She’d have to come up with a different plan for their chairs.

It didn’t take long for the girl to come back to her and offer to lead her to the head of the hospital. She sighed and followed, reluctantly standing up from the nice cool, if terribly uncomfortable, chair.

She figured she could get through a chat with the head mednin before requesting a location to sleep for a while, then she could review the hospital and get started on designing improvements. That was her job after all, helping the Suna mednins have better hospital facilities.

She still wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but then she’d only seen the waiting room and a hallway. And mostly had been absorbed by the air conditioning and the chairs. She already knew she was going to have to figure out something to do about the sand -- that wasn’t a problem they had in Konoha, but everything seemed to be coated with a thin layer of it here, and that was going to be trouble when it came to medical procedures.

Medical procedures she wasn’t supposed to talk about because they might reveal some “secrets”. Which was just stupid. All she wanted to do was help people, and she was limited on how much she could do that because of “secrets.”

Maybe if she just _did_ some of the procedures with an attentive audience…It wasn’t training by getting boulders thrown, but it might still work at least for some things?

She hoped.

************

The Suna hospital staff are extremely open to all of her suggestions, to the point that she does start to worry it’s a cultural thing to just _agree_ — for all that she would never have pegged Temari as the type to do so. But still, she was some random nin from another village telling them what to do and…and they seemed to think everything was a good idea?

Definitely suspicious.

But then it comes time for them to actually start to implement some of her recommendations and…and they actually do it?

She doesn’t even get this kind of response at home, where she won’t hesitate to throw a chair through a wall to make a point. And also to get rid of the chair.

It doesn’t occur to her why, until a familiar face, covered in purple face paint, showed up near dinner time after about two months have passed.

She pulled him into a hug, which he accepted with grumbles. He and Temari had been trading on and off acting as the ambassador to Konoha, and she’d gotten used to the prickly bastard. And he’d gotten used to her and her tendency towards physical affection, that still freaked some of the other career ninja out.

She understood, she did, she could crush someone to death in a hug. So she liked to tell her friends they were trust exercises.

Either they trusted her and she’d get to give them a hug or they’d resist and she’d break them.

“I’m here to kidnap you for dinner — and also apologize, I only just got back from my mission and apparently my _little brother_ didn’t think to welcome you at all.” The way he said ‘little brother’ she could hear ‘socially incompetent’, and she reached out and smacked him on the arm, not using any strength, for it.

“That’s your Kazekage, moron, and I’m sure he’s busy, just like you were. Is Temari in town?”

She ignored the sudden silence from their audience — those she’d been working with for the past two months, but it was harder to ignore the loudly hissed “I told you that it was her!”

Aaaand why they’d been so willing to go along with her suggestions was starting to make sense.

She considered if she cared, as Kankuro guided her out of the office, chatting about the stupid diplomatic mission Temari was on, and decided she really didn’t. She was telling them things that were good suggestions, and if they were only taking them because she was friends with the siblings of the Kazekage that was fine. A little stupid of them, and they really should be more suspicious, but fine.

************

“Sakura,” Gaara greeted her at the door and she had to blink because whoa.

Okay, she understood the fan girls a little better now.

“Ow! The hell!” Kankuro shook her grip off his arm and scowled at her, and she reached out a hand to absently heal him, even as she avoided looking directly at Gaara, because hell. That was a lot.

“Don’t be a baby,” she said as she let her chakra go, “it was just a bone bruise, and it’s healed now besides.”

“Just a — you know _normal_ people are seriously impacted by _bone bruises_ ,” he cradled his arm, even though she’d healed it, and pouted at her.

She rolled her eyes, somewhat glad for the distraction from his ridiculously attractive little brother. Seriously, he didn’t have eyebrows, how was he pulling this off?

Something was probably broken in her, by being a ninja, that she found him attractive. Maybe _she_ had a thing for Kages?

She imagined Naruto in the robe and shuddered.

“You’re fine. Also, hello Gaara-sama, good to see you, how have you been?” she asked, once she was sure her ardor had faded back to nothing.

And then he laughed and smiled and — shit.

Maybe she did still have fan girl tendencies. That was unfortunate.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Love love to all of you.
> 
> Also, working on replying to comments but being slow. And to that person who commented on my tendency to just have Sakura absently heal damage she's inflicted...yeah, I'm just leaning into that at this point tbh. Extra love love love to those who comment.


End file.
